JAPAN’S NEW financial services minister has launched an astonishing attack on the country’s giant business lobby, blaming it for fuelling a rise in suicides and family murders.
Veteran politician Shizuka Kamei said the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren)“should feel responsible” for a recent increase in people killing themselves or members of their family.
Mr Kamei also criticised corporate managers for sacking workers and hoarding profits in a speech this week.
“They are accumulating such profits as internal reserves so they can use them for internal restructuring.”
More than 30,000 people take their own lives in Japan every year – nearly 100 a day – making it one of the world’s suicide capitals.
The statistics jumped by 35 per cent during the 1997/8 Asian financial crisis and have stubbornly refused to fall. As Japan’s recession continues to bite, the new government of Yukio Hatoyama fears the post-war record of 34,427 set in 2003 could be overtaken.
Suicides in the first half of this year are up by more than 4 per cent, with many victims escaping from debt, financial problems and unemployment.
The official rate of 26.1 suicides per 100,000 people is almost double the global average of 14.5, twice the US figure and three times the UK figure.
A bitter critic of neo-liberal reforms in the world’s second-largest economy, Mr Kamei is shaping up as one of the government’s most controversial politicians since being appointed minister for financial and postal services last month.
He has made no secret of his dislike for the planned privatisation of Japan’s sprawling postal system, which includes the largest bank in the world measured in deposits, about $2 trillion. Mr Kamei was dumped from the government of Junichiro Koizumi in 2005 after he opposed the post office sell-off.
Many believe he will try to halt the privatisation and roll back many of the Koizumi reforms, which he blames for creating an “uncaring, divided Japan”.
He has accused the Keidanren of “changing Japan’s DNA” by supporting the Koizumi reforms and calls US-led globalisation “the law of the jungle”.
After he was appointed last month he told reporters he was determined to “rebuild a Japan that has been wrecked by market fundamentalism and free-market economics”.
Just a few weeks in office, he was attacked by bankers for promising to introduce a moratorium on small-business debt.
“When lenders are in trouble, we rescue them using taxpayers’ money,” he said. “When borrowers are in trouble, we give them respite from debt repayments. Plain and simple.”
In his speech this week, Mr Kamei said companies had“stopped treating people as humans”, creating so much human suffering that some were taking their own lives or the lives of family members.
Before the election, the minister also reportedly told business lobby chairman Fujio Mitarai that “the Keidanren should feel responsible for this”.